Pablo Picasso: life of the week

From his birth in 1881 to his death in 1973, Pablo Picasso lived a life as revolutionary as his art. A child prodigy who transformed modern art, his story is one of genius, reinvention, scandal and relentless creativity. In this episode of the History Extra podcast's Life of the Week series, Danny Byrd speaks to Sue Rowe about the passions and upheavals that shaped the pioneer behind Cubism and masterpieces such as Guernica. Before Picasso became Picasso, he was a prodigy from Malaga in Spain, with an intense relationship with his family. especially his father.

What do we need to understand about his early life to understand everything that came later? His father was an art teacher and I think a pretty good artist. If you have an opportunity to go to Malaga and see Picasso's house where he grew up, there's a huge painting on the ground floor by his father of pigeons, which was one of uh Picasso's favourite subjects. And it's a strikingly good painting. Picasso was inspired by his father and was painting and drawing from a very, very early age.

If you go to the Picasso Museum in Malaga, you can see some of his drawings that he did aged about nine or ten. They are extraordinary portraits. I do feel it was a sort of God given gift. His mother was an adoring, doting Spanish mother who loved her son. She had two daughters, and one of the daughters died of diphtheria as a child, which did affect Picasso.

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